Mouthing off

23 April, 2010

"In the four weeks of the World Cup, blokes tend to get a bit obsessed with football to the extent that they don't look after their partners. The idea is that in the week before the World Cup, we're saying 'ladies, make sure you get your oats'. What we mean innocently by that is you get to eat oat bread during the course of that week..."

marketing director Jon Goldstone on Hovis' 'Get your oats' campaign, to be targeted at sexually frustrated women in the build-up to the World Cup

"I thought it was petty and ridiculous. I realise they have rules to stick to, but it was so silly, I felt stupid. The staff made me feel like I had committed a crime, yet all I was doing was eating one of their biscuits. The way they made such a big song and dance about it, you would have thought they had captured a shoplifter"

86-year-old widow Thelma Williams falls foul of M&S's VAT police after chomping a 39p biscuit purchased in the food hall in one of its cafés in Blackburn